


The Smallest Demon

by ladygekko



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Abominations (Dragon Age), Adorable Cole (Dragon Age), Cole is a cinnamon bun, Demons, Desire Demons (Dragon Age), Fluff, dad!varric, posession, super fluffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24166009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladygekko/pseuds/ladygekko
Summary: There is a new demon in Skyhold, and only Cole can sense it. It's just so... small. It might not even be worth doing anything about it, really. Soon though, it begins to grow; it begins to want. Cole has to get help now, doesn't he?100% fluff.
Relationships: Cole & Cullen Rutherford, Cole & Dorian Pavus, Cole & Iron Bull, Cole & Solas (Dragon Age), Cole & Varric Tethras
Comments: 15
Kudos: 90





	The Smallest Demon

“Solas.”

Solas almost jumped at the sudden appearance of the spirit boy, right next to his shoulder. It would have been disastrous; the plaster was wet, the pigments were mere moments away from being applied. If he hadn’t had millenia of practice being surprised, he would have ruined his latest mural.

“Hello Cole.”

“Solas.” the boy repeated, looking at him out of the side of his eye. “I have a question.”

“Yes?” 

“May I ask my question?”

Solas put down his tools. It was going to be one of those interactions. “Yes, Cole, you may ask me any question you may have, and I’ll endeavour to answer as best I can.” Answering Cole’s questions had become more difficult as of late. He had, despite Solas’ best efforts, become more human than before, and the questions had gotten… more common. They were also often quite pedantic. Or perhaps Solas was becoming tired of answering.

Cole hesitated, and for the first time, Solas noticed the boy had his daggers out. He never had them out within the walls of Skyhold.

“Is everything alright, Cole?” he asked.

“How small is too big?” the boy whispered, almost conspiratorially.

“Too big?”

“For demons.”

“Cole?”

The boy’s eyes locked onto Solas’. “How small is too big for a demon?”

It took a moment for Solas to catch up. “The size of a spirit doesn’t predetermine their will or their power…” he began. “As you know each spirit’s influence in the Fade will differ, and the size isn’t…” 

He startled (and properly startled this time, all his years not helping) as Cole put up his hand to stop him speaking. “You are no help today, Solas.” The boy disappeared.

It took the elf more time than he would have liked to regain his composure. He resolved to travel the Fade that evening, to look out for anything… small.

\--

It had to be a Desire demon, Cole decided. Perhaps Pride. It was all so much more difficult since he had become more human. He liked petting kittens and eating blueberry pastries and the lovely scarves Josephine would give him, but it made listening harder. He also wasn’t sure if he enjoyed sleeping. Having to pee was distracting and hurt if you ignored it. Listening to his body and his mind, along with all the other hurts around the fortress, it was too loud and too quiet at the same time.

Too quiet.

It was a Desire demon. It was small, smaller than a wisp, smaller than a breeze, but it had so much power already. He could tell it was affecting the woman it had contaminated, beginning to twist her inside, beginning to change how she felt, how she behaved. No one else seemed to notice though. None of the mages or templars had started to scream “Abomination!”; no more than usual anyway.

If it was a Desire demon, he knew who he needed to talk to.

“Dorian?”

“Yes Cole?!” Dorian startled, trying to control the awkward squeak in his voice. “How can I be of service to Skyhold’s most surprisingly shocking young man - after myself, that is.”

Cole’s lips twitched into what may have passed for a smile. There were always more words than needed, when he spoke with Dorian. Even if he didn’t understand all of them or even hear them, sometimes, that was just how Dorian was.

“You know Desire demons.” he stated.

Dorian’s eyes opened in surprise, and after a pause he shut the book he had been reading, perhaps a bit harder than needed. “Yes, I am… intimately familiar with the subject of Desire demons. I may even have been accused of being one myself, a few times.” He smirked, but not too much. He knew it was mostly lost on Cole.

“How big are they?”

The smile vanished. “How big?”

“When they’re small, how big are they?”

Dorian didn’t answer right away. “Why do you want to know?” he asks, buying himself time.

“I just want to know.” Cole said. He stopped speaking, but Dorian waited. Something in Cole’s shoulders, some tension, indicated there was more coming. It was easier to see him, to focus on him, now that he was more human. There was more body language to read, despite it being in a foreign, unpractised tongue.

“I just want to know when I need to worry about cutting it out, if it keeps growing.” Cole whispered.

Ravens cawed above them. Someone on the other side of the library turned over a page. Outside, something clanged, perhaps a training sword on a shield.

Dorian moved slowly, trying to line himself up with Cole’s indirect gaze. “Demons aren’t something that can be cut out of someone, Cole.” he says quietly. “Possession isn’t really a physical affliction.”

“I could cut this one out, I know I could.”

Another caw. Another clang.

“Perhaps we should confer with Solas about this…” Dorian said slowly, hating himself as he said it.

With an annoyed huff, Cole disappeared. Dorian had never heard him express annoyance before; frankly, it was as unnerving as Cole’s questions had been. Hating himself for it, Dorian stood up and went down the stairs to the bottom floor of the rotunda.

“Solas, I seem to have had the most peculiar conversation with Cole this morning…”

“About a small demon?” Solas asked.

“Ah, I see I wasn’t his first port of call.”

“Indeed.”

\--

The tiny demon slept, grew and wanted. It _wanted_ so much. Cole watched it quietly, perched on top of a dresser, his knives held loosely in his hands. He didn’t think he would need them, not tonight. The demon hadn’t hurt anyone yet, not really. But there was so much _want_ . The _want_ was affecting the host, and those around the host as well. They wanted, but there was a taint of worry as well, as if the want was all sharp points and unsure edges.

Sometimes Cole wanted things, now. He had come back from a mission in the Emprise last month, and he had wanted a hot bath. Had _wanted_ it. He had stayed in the bath for a long time. Long enough that he had worried about his fingers and toes, how they had wrinkled like so many of the bodies they had seen in the Fallow Mire, no longer smooth, but waterlogged and wrinkly. Long enough that it had taken Varric and the Inquisitor quite a while to talk him down, to explain that he wasn’t becoming undead. Varric had laughed, afterwards, but he hadn’t been laughing at first, when Coles entire body had been shaking despite how warm the bath had been.

This want was different. The possessed had wanted first, then the man who now lay beside her on the bed had wanted too. But the want was still sharp, still had a bit of unease, as if the demon hadn’t done a good enough job to ensnare them.

Perhaps it was too small still to do a good job. A bad job. A good job.

Cole could cut it out. It wasn’t very deep inside. Something stopped him. He stared at the sleepers below him, his knives loose. He tried to sort out the want.

\--

“Don’t worry, Varric.” Cole said. “I’m keeping an eye on it. When it starts to hurt her, I’ll carve it out. It’s still much smaller than me, much weaker.”

Oh, Varric did worry. He worried even more than he had previously, when Dorian and Solas had both approached him, with matching concerned looks on their faces. It took a lot to make them agree; in fact, Varric wasn’t sure he’d ever seen them agree on anything except the quality of the house red at the Herald’s Rest. And that had only been a single, quiet nod.

This was a coordinated effort to figure out what was happening with the Kid. Cause something was definitely happening. He’d been twitchy (twitchier than normal) and odd (no more than normal, but in a different way) for a few weeks now.

“Kid, we should really talk to Curly about this, or one of the other templars maybe. If there is an abomination in Skyhold, we need to…” Needed to do something, of course. He’d had enough exposure to abominations to last anyone’s lifetime back in Kirkwall. He hadn’t been in the thick of it, not all the time, but just hearing some of the stories, hearing the screams… “You know abominations are bad news, Cole. We have to tell…”

“But they’ll hurt it, and they _want_ it so much. The _want_ makes them so happy…”

“Ok, Kid, ok. Just… Let me get Sparkler and Chuckles, we’ll pick up Curly on the way, and we can all go and we won’t do anything rash, alright? We’ll just go… check it out.”

“You won’t hurt the demon?” Cole asked quietly. He had intended on killing it, on sending it back to the Fade, but now he wasn’t so sure anymore. He wished he hadn’t spoken about it to the others at all, although that could be because he had been affected by the Desire demon as well, on those long nights making sure it didn’t burst out of its host. Making sure it didn’t hurt anyone, yet making everyone _want_.

“I can’t promise that, Kid. But if Chuckles can… do something, I’ll let him do it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Right, can you take us to the demon?”

“Yes. Cullen too. I’ll get him.”

“Walk with your feet!” Varric yelled, too late to catch the disappearing boy.

From outside the hall Varric heard a yell, then a crash of plate armor on the ground. “He’s found Curly, then…” he mumbled to himself, grabbing Bianca from beside the fireplace.

\--

“It’s here.” Cole said, without a waver in his voice, pointing into the open doorway of the infirmary.

Both Solas and Dorian had their staffs in their hands. Bianca was at Varric’s side, apparently casually but steady as a rock. Cullen went in first, his shield up, ready to deflect anything, trying to calm his nerves. After Cole’s surprise appearance earlier, it was remarkably difficult to do, even with the experienced team at his back.

They entered the quiet infirmary.

“... so you’re about 3 months along now, and it looks like everything is going great.” the mage who worked in the infirmary said quietly to the woman who was sitting on one of the cots. She was smiling, though she looked a bit tired. The man next to her was smiling too, his hand on her shoulder, his thumb rubbing small circles into the top of her arm. His attention was drawn to the door, and his smile wavered a bit, pulling the woman closer to him.

The mage stepped forward. “Commander. Gentlemen. Are you in need of any medical aid this morning?” she asked, getting between the armed men and her patients.

“It seems… We have concerns…” Cullen started, then Cole slipped between the other men, past the healer, to kneel down next to the couple.

“It’s in here, and it’s growing.” he said, his hands on top of the woman’s torso, not touching but reaching. “It’s growing bigger and louder and more full of _want_.” The woman had gone pale with fear, leaning into the man behind her as far as she could.

There was a beat of silence in the infirmary.

“Oh for the Maker’s sake…” Dorian mumbled loudly, strapping his staff onto his back, as he left the building in a huff.

“I feel, Master Tethras, that this would be a concern best addressed by yourself.” Solas said, half a smile creeping into his tone. “It seems my skills with Fade denizens will not be required today.” He left as well, shaking his head.

Cullen choked out a stiff “Congratulations!” and ran after Dorian and Solas.

Varric rubbed at his face, trying to erase the scene in front of him. When he looked again, nothing had changed. “Kid, come here.” he said, with a sigh that he felt he hadn’t let up since he was introduced to Cole. “Now.”

Cole came over, without making eye contact with anyone but the floor.

“Congratulations to both of you, we’ll see ourselves out. The first round’s on me in a few months when it’ll be time to celebrate.” He waved to the couple and to the angry mage as casually as he could, pulling Cole out by his shirt.

“I can’t believe I need to talk about this…” he was heard ranting, as he left the building.

\--

“Hello The Iron Bull.” Cole said quietly.

The small red head who was currently on the bed shrieked and tried to hide underneath the Bull’s bulk.

“Cole, get out!”

“Are you trying to put a demon inside her, The Iron Bull?”

“OUT!”


End file.
